Teachers: Let us do some of the Work! Send maze links to your class and we'll tell you how your students did-nothing could be easier! (We'll provide a unique code to tag your students). As they play the Biology, Math or History maze games that you assign, they'll acquire and apply knowledge to fill in their gaps, and you'll get a compact summary (for free) so you can see how they did. Our immediate goal is to keep building our permanent, free collection so that every student can boost their STEM skills (premium collections will be added later).

Student Feedback: [see quotes below] Mazes motivate students to work harder and to acquire and apply knowledge. This in turn boosts synaptic integration and retention (see Synapse World below). Most students find our maze games a LOT more fun than online quizzes. Even students who struggled with the game concept found our games valuable as a practice and review activity for upcoming exams.

More FUN for your students! Lecture got your students down? Project a maze game in class and let students compete as groups to finish the maze. [We typically let a group keep going until they get one wrong]. Or let the whole class navigate using clickers. Or let groups work in parallel on their tablets or smart phones, to see who gets the Maze Completion Code first. Or offer extra credit for completing mazes at home. Or open a maze at 9:00 pm and see which student completes it the fastest (we can provide individual student results if they register). Most students would MUCH rather play our maze games than study—and you can be their hero at the click of a link!

You give us 20 Questions & We'll give you the World. Our standard maze is constructed from 20 multiple choice questions, so we can rapidly generate maze games for any imaginable subject and skill level. At first, some players might get stuck, but during maze play we provide more and more help so that all students can experience the synaptic boost that comes with solving the maze problem. This boost is amplified by the Explanations, that are typically provided at maze exits. These are prime learning moments and ALL students are eager to see which ones they got right and why their wrong answers were wrong.

What 20 Facts should I know BEFORE I start your course? How nice would it be if every student had a solid foundation of the most central facts needed to start off the semester? Let us create a maze tailored to your upcoming semester. Assign it to your students in advance of your first lecture and you'll know EXACTLY how prepared they are. Then follow up with weekly mazes to highlight critical content and preview midterms and finals. Students LOVE the extra practice and explanations that our college education games provide.

From K12 to Graduate Students: Children as young as second grade have enjoyed playing our maze games and so we are working to rapidly grow K12 content to meet the inquisitive needs of young learners. At the opposite end of the pipeline, our highest level Research Games will incorporate more advanced and specialized knowledge and provide engaging activities for advanced undergrads, postdocs and even professors. Given the great shortage of STEM workers in the US, we would like to boost the mathematical and scientific capabilities of students at every level so that more aspire to the highest levels of technological competence.

Synapse World: Cognitive Architectures are Forever. Activation of synaptic connections between nerve cells is the basis of all learning and memory. Moreover, Motivational State is a powerful amplifier of these synaptic learning processes. Our Digital Maze Games leverage this learning multiplier by tapping into a powerful, evolutionary imperative: our innate drive to solve maze problems (which were existential matters to our ancestors). With the advent of digital environments, a new kind of maze became possible: mazes constructed within Information Space. Rather than navigating a physical maze, the player/student must find the correct path through a virtual maze constructed purely from information. Extensive testing in college courses has shown that our Digital Maze games lead players to think about what they do and do not know and to seek new knowledge to solve these maze puzzles (seeMason Report). DM Games thus create a unique nexus where knowledge application and cognitive advancement are boosted by our natural motivation to solve maze puzzles.

DM Games are particularly apropos in knowledge arenas where items of information must be constructed into more complex concepts, models and cognitive architectures. This learning style meshes with research into the phylogenetic emergence of biological intelligence. Particularly relevant is the massively interconnected nature of human neocortex, and the massively parallel subconscious information processing (SCIP) that is going on in our brains all the time, during both waking and sleep! SCIP lies at the heart of all cognitive advance, and our bias is that people must assimilate many facts (and especially the right facts) in order to form new concepts and become masters of their domains. The DM Game complements traditional learning strategies but is unique in creating precious learning moments during maze–heightened motivational states. Our Maze Breaks lead students to think more deeply about what they do and do not know—thereby providing students with a uniquely valuable cognitive activity.

EARLY STUDENT FEEDBACK
♦“This maze game was: surprisingly fun...and a great distraction from my biochem homework ☺”
♦“I was so excited to finish that I forgot to answer your (other) questions!”
♦“I completed the neuro maze! Got them all right too! Hurrah! I had to really think about the answers... It was a very good review and did give me a good sense of what I need to work on and what I understand.”
♦“The neuro maze game was useful b/c it makes me think of the question and apply my knowledge rather than just reading what I think I already know (and sometimes don't).”

FEEDBACK ONNEWESTNEUROBIO MAZES++ “I liked that the maze was a break from studying from power points and notes and it was good test of skills.”++ “I did the NeuroMazes and also the Biology 2 Maze. I actually really like them; they're definitely a different way of studying and I think the ambiguity is helpful, in a way, because it kind of simulates an exam when you don't know whether or not your answers are correct.”++ “I've finished two Mazes, the level 1 and the midterm one. Have to say they are awesome. I've learnt a lot from the maze. Particularly, I corrected my previous wrong memories of the CREB mechanisms. The mazes strengthened my knowledge of those key points.”++ “This has really helped me in my studying for this midterm and solidified some of the questions I wasn't sure about b/c I was forced to look them up.”++ “After finishing reviewing all of the material I attempted the Neuro Mid-Term. I found it to be very useful! It is certainly easier to stay focused with an interactive activity like a maze, especially after reviewing all of the material. It's a much more appealing test of comprehension!”

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MazeFire LLC was founded by Donald M. O'Malley, researcher in Biological Intelligence at Northeastern University,
and Brian Griffiths, a neural epigenetics researcher at UMass Boston. MazeFire 2.0 was designed and created by
Orion Business Solutions LLC.
We hope our expanding collection of free, educational click-and-play games will spark frequent review and deeper learning
for teachers, publishers, Ed-Tech innovators, students and kids of all ages.